Florida Travel Agents Fight Higher Bond on Cuba Trips

Sunday

Jul 27, 2008 at 3:39 AM

Travel agents in South Florida filed a lawsuit against the state challenging a new law requiring them to post a one-time $250,000 bond and disclose the names of clients in order to continue their business with Cuba.

CARMEN GENTILE

MIAMI — Teresa Aral, a travel agent in South Florida, was greatly relieved after learning she did not have to pay the state a quarter of a million dollars to keep booking trips to Cuba. For now, at least.

Ms. Aral, along with 15 other agents providing charter flights to Cuba, filed a lawsuit in Miami against the State of Florida, challenging a new law requiring them to post a one-time $250,000 bond and disclose the names of clients in order to continue their business with Cuba. But earlier this month, a federal judge temporarily lifted the measure while he considered its legality.

“I’m very grateful that at least the judicial branch of government here is still working,” Ms. Aral said after the ruling.

Cuban-Americans are allowed to visit the island every three years and must obtain visas through the federal government.

Despite the recent ruling, the legal battle between the travel agents and Florida lawmakers over the cost of doing business with the Raúl Castro-run government, which controls all aspects of commercial air travel into Cuba, is far from over.

Before the measure was signed into law in June by Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican, all travel agencies were required to pay the state a one-time $25,000 bond.

State Representative David Rivera, a Republican from Miami and a Cuban-American, who sponsored the bill, said the travel agents providing Cuba trips should post a larger bond to cover the cost of “reasonable oversight” of those doing business with a “terrorist government.”

Mr. Rivera said the law was an “antiterrorism bill” that requires any Florida travel agent who provides direct flights to any country on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism to pay the bond. Since there are no direct flights from Miami to any other countries on the list critics say the law was intended to regulate travel to Cuba.

Mr. Rivera said the bond would be used to investigate any agency accused of violating the law regulating travel to Cuba, though the legislation does not specify what constitutes a violation.

Mr. Rivera said the law was designed to protect customers from price gouging and “unscrupulous travel agents.”

“Every business in Florida is regulated,” Mr. Rivera said after the July 1 decision by the judge, Alan S. Gold of Federal District Court. “So travel agents that deal with terrorist governments don’t deserve an exemption from the regulations.” The case is to return to court in September.

Ira Kurzban, a lawyer for the travel agents who brought the suit, said the law was more about Florida politicking rather than protecting consumers.

“This law was conceived for no reason other than to placate a small group of Cuban-Americans out of step with the Cuban community,” said Mr. Kurzban, who also said it was unconstitutional and “attempts to embroil the State of Florida in foreign policy.”

Some legal experts agree, saying the law oversteps the bounds of state authority.

“States simply can’t decide they want to have their own foreign policy,” said Bernard H. Oxman, an international law professor at the University of Miami.

Erik Miller, the lawyer for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which regulates the state’s travel agencies, said at the court hearing that the law “does not invade the province of federal status.”